Steve Martin Introduces Lawren Harris to America

The Hammer’s upcoming October show of Lawren Harris landscapes, The Idea of the North, was organized by Steve Martin. It took a celebrity to get Americans to take Canadian art seriously. But that’s ok. We’re

“A painter of the backwoods and the streets of Toronto, Harris went by boxcar, boat, and boot to the Canadian north, and it provided his work with the necessary elevation. He stopped making scenes of shady lanes and streets with strolling couples, and almost every living thing vanished from his pictures. He now began a series of paintings that achieved — then surpassed — his dream of a national art of Canada. But these new scenes, devoid of life except for the occasional mossy plain, are not dead. The absence of organic things in the mountains, lakes, and icebergs he now painted created a paradoxical effect: the pictures came to life.”

“When Steve Martin first introduced us to Lawren Harris’s paintings, I was struck by their astonishing beauty and surprised by how virtually unknown this Canadian artist is in the U.S.,” said Ann Philbin, director of the Hammer Museum. “Following in the tradition of artist-curated exhibitions like Robert Gober’s Charles Burchfield exhibition and the ongoing Houseguest series, we invited Steve to apply his deep knowledge of twentieth-century art to introduce an American audience to Harris’ work.”